A Syndicate member of the University of Calicut has objected to the reported decision to exclude dissenting notes from the minutes of the Syndicate meeting if they are not approved by a majority of members.
P. Rasheed Ahammed, member aligned to the United Democratic Front, said on Thursday that the decision was communicated through an order dated June 28. The order said dissenting notes would be read at the meeting and only those approved would be included in the minutes.
University sources, however, said there was no ban on including dissent notes in the minutes. But, some lengthy explanations submitted by the member were not made part of it. They said it was the discretion of the Vice Chancellor, who chairs the Syndicate meeting, what to include in the minutes.
Meanwhile, in a letter to the Governor, Mr. Ahammed claimed that the decisions of the Syndicate had been “extremely biased” against teachers and staff members who don’t subscribe to Left-wing organisations. Mr. Ahammed pointed out that he had been objecting to this all along and recording his dissent.
He alleged that T. Mohamed Sajid, an instrumentation engineer at the university, was suspended from service recently for allegedly raising his voice against the corruption of one Syndicate member. After he approached the court, an inquiry was conducted against Mr. Sajid for an alleged financial misappropriation that took place while installing Local Area Network system in the university. Mr. Ahammed claimed that Mr. Sajid had no role in the purchase of the equipment. The Syndicate meeting on August 11 approved the inquiry report and proposed to demote Mr. Sajid. Mr. Ahammed said that this item was not even included in the meeting’s agenda and the inquiry report was not circulated among the members. It was introduced as an out-of-agenda item and was approved without anyone going through the contents.
Mr. Ahammed said that though he wanted to record his dissent against what he called the “biased and unfair” decision, the Vice Chancellor “wilfully did not attach his dissent note in the minutes”. He urged the Governor to direct the Vice Chancellor to attach the detailed dissent note to the minutes and accordingly revise the orders.
